26 comments:

That was a huge strawman that he knocked down...The courts have upheld federal laws banning gun ownership by people convicted of felonies and some misdemeanors, by illegal aliens and by drug addicts. They have upheld laws banning machine guns and sawed-off shotguns. They have upheld laws making it illegal to carry guns near schools or in post offices. And they have upheld laws concerning concealed and unregistered weapons.

How many NRA members (Heller supporters all) have an issue with any of these actions?

Chicago suburbs Wilmette and Morton Grove overturned their bans almost instantly. I believe Evanston followed suit shortly. Chicago is of interest because it has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country, of the sort that would be illegal under Heller. I doubt it's gotten much play in many media outlets, but, yes, laws have changed.

§ 7-2501.01.10 "Machine gun" means any firearm which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily converted or restored to shoot:(a)...(b) Semiautomatically, more than 12 shots without manual reloading.

... which effectively eliminates almost all handguns other than revolvers, since one could ostensibly obtain or modify a large capacity magazine (no matter how impractical) for any non-revolving semi-auto pistol. Since home-defense requires the ability to repeatedly fire at an assailant, and since it can be difficult to reload a revolver, especially in the middle of an invasion at night, this restriction is not in accordance with the Heller decision, which stipulated that gun laws should not hinder an individual in the defense of their life and property.

They have upheld laws making it illegal to carry guns near schools or in post offices.Say it's illegal to carry within a 1000 feet of a school. Now say you live 600 feet from a school. Your permit to carry concealed is useless when you take your dog for a walk.Why should legal carry be forbidden in a post office? Bad things happen to good people everywhere.As for machine guns - I don't want them banned as I want to buy one. :)I wouldn't necessarily equate NRA members to Heller supporters. Some feel it didn't go far enough while some would give up handguns/EBRs/etc as long as they get to keep their expensive OU shotguns.

What's also painfully clear is that the gun owning public is not deriving any comfort from the Heller decision. Sales are out of sight for guns and ammunition. Shortages are hitting most stores in the US for both. Clearly there is stockpiling going on in anticipation of some sort of ban.

One of the more insteresting moves by the government is the banning of sale of used military brass (cases). These are usually purchased by the reloading manufacturers who reload them for the public market. The government recently stopped selling them in reloadable condition, meaning they crush them first. This is interesting as on the open market they government can get $2 a pound for the reloadable brass, but only $.35 a pound for the crushed cases.

In addition, there are multiple bills pending right now which mandate that all ammunition would have to be marked/serialized so that all ammunition is traceble. This is painfully reminicent of the "smart guns" laws that went no where but to make guns unaffordable and unusable.

I foresee more of these back door laws coming to light as legislators struggle to find ways ot ban guns will circumventing Heller...

Looks to me like a lot of wishful thinking. And what they have going against them is that the trend is flowing the other way at the Supreme Court, and probably a lot of the federal appeals courts.

So, while Heller may not have made much of a difference yet, it is likely to in the future. And the odds of the High Court buying into one of their alternative incorporation doctrines is not all that great.

Your presumption assumes both sides want the plain meaning of the Constitution to prevail, their personal policy preferences be damned. This is clearly not the case in general, though with some notable, honorable exceptions (the quoted Sanford Levinson being a prominent example.)

The Word of Soros' Party for NYT press release is that there is no real Second Amendment to complain about losing when next year's Omama/Pelosi appointees start to bury it into a memory hole with a Living Tyranny interpretation on 5 to 4 votes. They plan to win!

Actually, I'm inclined to agree with Liptak's main point: This Heller case didn't really do much, and I don't think that it will be applied in the future to protect Second Amendment rights.

Obama will tax weapons and ammunition to such a degree that they'll be unobtainable to all but a few. That's why there's a run on guns and ammo right now -- we all see this coming.

Perhaps one of the many lawyers here can explain this to me: We can't tax a church, because that would interfere with someone's First Amendment rights; but we can tax guns and ammo, without violating their Second Amendment rights. Why is that?

So Obama will first weaken the armed citizenry, by depriving them of ammo for a few years, and Heller won't be applied to stop him (how could it be, when taxation of guns and ammo is already considered kosher?). Then they'll use a school shooting as an excuse to start rounding up weapons, probably during the first half of Obama's third term.

By then, Obama will have appointed 2 or 3 hyper-partisans to SCOTUS, and Heller won't be worth a hill of beans.

I like the irony of using a school shooting as the impetus for mass confiscation -- since the only reason that school shootings happen is the fact that they're "gun-free zones", meaning that maniacs know they won't receive any return fire. Same goes for post offices and churches.

But don't mind me -- I'm just one of those paranoid knuckle-draggers who called Obama a socialist before the election. Fortunately, Althouse set me straight -- he's really a closet conservative.

And bear in mind what might have happened had Heller gone the other way -- it would have mobilized and motivated tens of millions of gun owners just a few months before the election.

Heller made it safe for soft-headed RINOs to vote for Obama and assuage their white guilt.

If Obama accomplishes all that I think he'd like to, our descendants won't be citizens, they'll be subjects; and they'll look back at the Heller decision as the beginning of the end of individual liberty.